


Those Left Behind

by tipofthepencil



Category: Sword Art Online, Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Bad Decisions, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Digital Art, Do not repost onto another website, Explicit Language, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Not Beta Read, and also slightly more than that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-10-18 04:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20633321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tipofthepencil/pseuds/tipofthepencil
Summary: Hiragana Yukari is not the only person to have a family member trapped in Sword Art Online. She's not even the only one to have her little brother trapped in there.But fuck, she only has one little brother.(The storyline of SAO, except it follows those trapped on the other side, in the real world. Wherein things are gained, things are lost, and canon plotholes are hopefully patched.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> a pet project 12k in the making. this took me around three weeks. as always, not beta'd, so grammar is definitely not on point. criticism is infinitely welcome.

<~o~>

“The newest break in technology of our times, the **<<Nerve Gear>>**, has drawn in a following of more than a million players---”

Click.

“---are advancing farther and farther into humanity’s potential.”

Click

“Beta testing shows a flawless system---”

Click.

“Scholars are saying this is a turning point in human technological advancement---”

Click.

“---creator, Kayaba Akihiko---”

Click.

“Recent interviews reveal that the genius has still more in store---as if it isn’t interesting enough already!”

Click.

“---three days until SAO release!”

<~o~>

“Would you leave Takeshi for him?” Ootori prodded gleefully.

“T-t-that’s…!” Her friend from 3-A flushed. “_ M-Mina! _”

The rest of the clique giggled together, and before a new target was picked and the teasing started all over again.

There wasn’t a straight girl in class who didn’t dream about marrying Kayaba Akihiko. Between his looks, his quiet personality, and most importantly his money, even the girls with prior commitments or different tastes couldn’t help wavering. He was too good of a catch.

Hiragana Yukari ran in a slightly different, mildly more problematic crowd, but she also had no trouble admitting that she’d take the opportunity if it was given to her. She was a realist, however, and knew her chances. The probability in question was probably even lower than that of the typical high school girl, if only because of her record.

Hiragana Yukari was a delinquent.

She didn’t mean to be. Yukari studied diligently for her classes, observed traffic laws, and didn’t do drugs or alcohol. She didn’t help old ladies cross the street, but that was more due to the deficit of senior citizens rather than an unwillingness to.

But though she reviewed the class materials, her natural ineptitude meant she never got higher than a middling B grade. And though she never tried drugs, many friends from a friend group she had formed when she was still in middle school did. Yukari also had a nasty habit of losing her temper, and slights the average person could brush off lit a fire in her that refused to die before revenge was extracted.

Yukari’s motto was as such: more problems in life are solved by fists than by words.

It wasn’t hard to see why Yukari resembled a teacher’s nightmare. Despite the bad rumors that floated around about her from time to time (that she punched out a health inspector, that she ripped up someone’s homework, that she broke a table leg, etc), Yukari found that she didn’t mind it. Her reputation had people leaving her alone, and the people who mattered knew better.

(Additionally, the only thing that was true was that she punched out a (fake) health inspector during a school festival. That was a different story.)

“Ugh,” Mikoto groaned, freshly awoken from her nap. “Why do they talk like _ that _? We’re about to graduate, for God’s sake! You’d think this was a daycare!” She made no effort to keep her voice down, and the group turned as one to shoot her dirty looks. Mikoto craned her head and narrowed her eyes right back.

The group of girls turned away first. When they started talking again, it was pitched lower. Neither Yukari not Mikoto missed the occasional glares that were thrown their way.

Mikoto snorted, and stretched upwards like a bored cat.

Yukari rested her head against her arms and smiled into the fold of her uniform.

She much preferred it like this.

<~o~>

“Are you _ sure _ this is what you want?”

Taiki bounced on his heels. “Oh my god, are you going deaf? You’re going deaf, aren’t you? I told you like, fifty times already!”

Yukari dropped a hand on Taiki’s head, and forced it down. “Brat,” she grumbled fondly, and she could see him sticking out his tongue at her.” She leaned out to see how many people were before them in the line. At least fifty, by her reckoning. The new game must be popular, if heading out at the crack of dawn wasn’t early enough. “I’m just saying, Mom and Dad are giving you a lot of money here. Don’t you want to save it up for a vacation or something?”

Even though she was already waiting in line, still hours before the store opened, Yukari still felt uneasy. Splurging on this sort of expense would have been unthinkable when she was his age.

“Stuuupid,” Taiki drawled. “I’m fourteen! As if Mom and Dad would let me go alone.”

“I’m saying when you start working,” Yukari clarified, amused despite herself.

Taiki stared at her blankly. “Don’t even joke about that.”

She raised her hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. I won’t.” She noticed him fidgeting with his hands, looking uncertain again. And Taiki wondered why she kept asking him. “Everything alright, squirt?” 

Taiki wrung out his hands, and looked embarrassed. “Thankyouforbuyingmethisgame.”

Yukari was bemused. “Technically mom and dad are buying it,” she reminded him. “I’m just here to stand in line with you.”

Taiki shook his head fiercely. “Mom told me that you were always coming home late because you were working afterschool and you wanted to help pay for this game.”

“Ah.” Her cheeks heated. She tried not to make it too obvious she was looking away. “It wasn’t a big deal. Most of the money went back to me, anyway.”

“Mom said that was what convinced her and dad to let me have this,” Taiki said insistently. “So just let me thank you.”

It was hard not to be envious of her younger sibling, who seemed to get away with more things than she ever could. Their parents had really loosened up over the years, especially in regards with their youngest. Taiki, in Yukari’s humble opinion, was probably one of those one-in-a-thousand geniuses. He already seemed farther in life than she was, such that she often felt both proud and intimidated by him.

But even if she was jealous, it was in bad form for an older sibling to show it. She had a very important role as his older sister, after all. They were otherwise different people, with very different roles to fill.

Yukari smiled, and reached over to squeeze his shoulder. “Anytime, Taiki.”

<~o~>

When SAO was officially released, it was greeted with fierce excitement from the people. 

That excitement...quickly turned to horror.

<~o~>

“Taiki, Mom’s been calling your name for about five minutes. What the hell are you doing?” Yukari poked her head into his room, and sighed when she saw that he still had the **<<NerveGear>>** on his head. Honestly. Didn’t he promise to stop before dinner started?

Yukari walked over to his prone body. “Squirt? It’s dinner time! Hello?” She almost waved her hand in front of his face but then remembered that he couldn’t see anything. So she tapped it instead. “Taiki? C’mon, Mom’s going to get angry.” There was no response. “Dude. I’ll pull that thing off of you if you don’t log off. Don’t think I won’t do it.”

When Taiki didn’t so much as stir, Yukari sighed and knocked on the headgear again. Maybe he couldn’t hear her while inside the game? Well, if he was enjoying the game so much, it couldn’t hurt to let him have fun a little longer. He was usually so well behaved anyway.

She’ll just talk to Mom.

<~o~>

It was a little after dinner when the program abruptly changed into the national news channel. Curious, Yukari turned away from her school book to see what was going on.

The newsman looked harried, and more than a little flustered. “Citizens are reporting an inability to leave the **<<NerveGear>>** for many participants of **<<Sword Art Online>>**.”

Yukari sat up a little, and leaned closer to the TV.

“This could be a glitch in the system, and there are no comments from the manufacturers of the game about the state of affairs.”

Her mom’s lips thinned out, and her dad looked up, recognizing the game as the one Taiki was gushing about. At the newsman’s next words, Yukari’s heart stuttered.

“Every forced removal of the **<<NerveGear>>** has resulted in a fatal occurrence. So parents everywhere, do NOT pull the plug.”

Yukari looked worriedly towards the direction of Taiki’s room. Was he actually stuck in the game? Her mom was already moving to the door, just as uneasy.

“ Authorities are planning to detain Mr. Kayaba---”

The screen blanked out once again, and this time, it changed to a dark room with a single chair in the middle. Sitting on that chair was a tall, lean man in a white lab coat. 

Mr. Kayaba.

Yukari held her breath. Mr. Kayaba must have realized what was wrong and fixed it. He was a genius, even more so than her brother. Taiki would be fine.

Mr. Kayaba sat and crossed his legs, hands folded in his lap, and delivered the verdict. “There is no mistake with the game. It is working exactly as it is intended to, no more and no less.” 

...What? Yukari felt her knees tremble, and she gripped her thighs to make them stop.

“Think of it as an experiment,” the man offered, still utterly composed. “I have made **<<Sword Art Online>**> as real as it could possibly be. Now it just stands to see if the players in the game are able to overcome it.”

He looked around the room for something Yukari couldn’t see, and shook his head. “I would heavily advise against removing the **<<NerveGear>>** in any manner. If you do, death is certain. The **<<NerveGear>>** will fry the brain, at the cerebellum. The only way to log out would be to defeat the game.”

Yukari stared at the TV monitor, her fingernails practically digging into the soft flesh of her thighs.

“And at this moment, I am the sole controller of a new world.”

She saw red.

<~o~>

There was a witch hunt. Nobody could get a hold of Kayaba Akihiko. Even the leading pioneers in computer science were unable to trace his signal.

What the public could do, was drag out all of his board members, collaborators, and developers and proverbially flay them alive.

Yukari drank in every trial hearing, every court order, and every verdict. It didn’t matter where she was---at home, at work, at school---when more news was released she excused herself and read for any updates.

Guilty, guilty, guilty. The sound of the merciless gavel temporarily soothed something in her.

Of all the people dragged before the judge, only two were declared innocent. One was a small-share board member who in turn was an owner of a large corporation. His primary defense, aside from his angry lambasting of everyone involved, was that his own daughter was stuck in the game. The other was a young, twenty-something male with slightly long arms. He was the most recent hire, and was scouted personally by Kayaba Akihiko for a paid internship.

Her brother was in the hospital, in a special wing they had set up specifically for patients in vegetative states. Even now, there was no sign of the man who put him there. He was just as unreachable, untraceable two months into the whole charade as he was that first day.

Yukari stared at the screen, and bit her nails until her finger bled.

<~o~>

The sixth month into manhunt, she quit her part-time job at the tattoo parlor. She had seen a poster informing her of an event at the local church to hold vigil for the spirits of those lost half a year ago. Taiki was still hanging on by a thread in the hospital, but suddenly she couldn’t sit around anymore.

If the anniversary came around and Taiki counted among those numbers….

She didn’t know what she would do.

The boss of the parlor, a dad of a friend’s boyfriend, let her go without a fuss and told her to come to him for anything he could help with. She thanked him for his care, and didn’t look back.

For the first time in three years, she dusted off her metal bat. If her parents noticed her lugging around a dented, hollow bat, they didn’t insist on having a talk this time.

They barely talked to her at all.

<~o~>

Nine months in, she found her first clue while knee deep in the city’s underground. 

She had always had a bit of a reputation, but never enough that people actively sought her out for trouble. Yukari had always known the underground in a “friend of a friend” sort of way, and in turn the city’s yakuza treated her as if she were a quiet, unassuming passerby. More than one leader had a kid who had also been trapped in the game, and they sometimes nodded to her in acknowledgement when they passed each other in the supermarket.

She made sure not to cause any waves, and it wasn’t hard. Everyone wanted to know where Kayaba Akihiko was. The only issue was that no one had an answer.

The city’s underworld was usually much less glamorous than the stories claim, but these days the darkness seethed in fury and the underworld was exactly as lawless as depicted.

Yukari had just been brushing past an alleyway filled with men in suits and shouting when she saw a hooded figure motion for her to follow them. Ignoring that sort of thing could get you killed, if in a mundane way, so she followed.

The hooded figure led her into a different alley, secluded in the darkness by a brewery. Yukari stepped forward and into the shadows, and a note was placed in her hands.

It looked like an address

Yukari whipped her head up. “Is this…?”

“No,” said the figure through a voice modulator. “He remains unfound.”

Yukari resisted the urge to crumple the slip. “Then why are you giving it to me?”

“You asked the boss to look into Yuuki Shouzo and Yoshida Haru,” the figure replied.

“So they could lead you to Kayaba Akihiko!” Yukari retorted angrily. “What do you expect me to do with this?”

The figure shrugged. “Beats me. The boss’s cousin called in a favor for you. Don’t react to a boon with ingratitude.” Yukari winced. Misaki shouldn’t have. “You have a grace period of three days, before this information will be open access. Do with it what you will.”

Yukari bit her lip in shame. Exclusive information was worth more than blood. She had to make it up to Misaki later. “Okay. Thank you.”

The hooded man shrugged again, and the line of his mouth looked sympathetic. “I wish you luck.”

<~o~>

That same afternoon, she knocked on door 343 of the apartment complex with the address given to her. The apartment building was third-tier: the floorboards creaked as she ascended the stairs, the light flickered, and the whole area was riddled with flies. The neighborhood itself was problematic, and she brought her bat and a can of pepper spray just in case.

“Drop it off at the door,” a muffled voice called out. It sounded male.

“I’m not delivery,” Yukari called back. “I’m here for the inhabitant of this apartment.”

There was a shuffle, and click. She saw some light pass through the peephole, and then it was gone. “Not interested. Bye.” Then the sound of footsteps going away.

Yukari jolted. “Wait!” she shouted, but there was no response. She pounded on the door for thirty more minutes before the setting sun forced her to return home. Throughout it all, there wasn’t another response.

<~o~>

The next day, she planned better. She skipped school for the third week in a row and rode the bus to the apartment complex on the note. Starting at 8 in the morning, she waited on the stairs going to the third floor and waited while people passed her in both directions. People gave her assessing looks, but her own gaze remained fixed on the dilapidated door right down the hall.

343 never so much as cracked open his door. Yukari was beginning to think that she missed him or simply arrived too late when the pizza delivery came at 4PM. Watching the pizza boy start climbing the stairs, she inhaled and took a chance.

“Excuse me!” she called down. “Is that for room 343?”

The pizza boy looked surprised to be addressed, and turned to look at something on his clipboard. “Uh, yeah, that’s right.”

Score.

“My friend sent me outside to pick it up,” Yukari said, confidently. Stealthily, she rolled her bat out of sight. “How much do I owe you? Here, let me come down to you. You must be tired, coming all this way.”

The boy flushed a little. “Aw, it wasn’t really that far,” he mumbled. “But thanks for your concern.”

Yukari merely smiled. 

Two minutes later and 2500 yen poorer, she had her ticket.

She walked up to the door, picked up her bat, and knocked. “Pizza delivery,” she called, pitching her voice lower.

A muffled groan. “Every single time. Just leave it at the door!”

“Sorry, man,” Yukari said, not feeling very sorry at all. “The company is enforcing new procedure. Boss says you gotta sign for it to make sure you got it.”

“Oh, for---alright, let me put some shoes on.”

When a young, haggard man with slightly longer arms opened the door, she didn’t know who was more surprised. But her reflexes were faster, and she managed to wedge a leg in the doorway before the door slammed on her.

“What, you don’t want your pizza?” Yukari asked, almost on autopilot. Inwardly her mind was racing. This man was…

“I don’t know who you are,” Yoshida Haru, former intern under Kayaba Akihiko, said. “I don’t want anything to do with you! Leave me alone!”

“You fucking wish,” Yukari said, and slammed her weight forward.

Somehow, despite their age gap, she was stronger. It didn’t take long before she stood in the living room, the door shut securely behind her. The place was a mess. Clothes and takeout boxes were strewn everywhere, and the floor had more than one suspicious stain.

Yoshida looked like he was torn between fuming and cowering. “What do you want?” he asked warily.

In all honesty, Yukari didn’t know either. She had always assumed the moment she sprung into action would be against Kayaba himself, not this pale imitation of him.

But it was the closest she had gotten in three months, and she was not letting this opportunity pass her by.

“I need your help,” Yukari said, simply. “I don’t know who else to turn to.”

Yoshida looked surprised, then suspicious, then confused. They stood staring at each other for a long time, before he finally broke it. “Why don’t we sit down?” he offered. “You must have a ridiculous story if you need help from _ me _.”

She spared him the pleasantries and ignored his invitation. “It’s not that ridiculous. My name is Hiragana Yukari. I need your help to save my little brother.” 

“Yoshida Haru, but I’m not a doctor,” Yoshida said with an awkward smile. “What do you want me to do?”

Yukari looked him in the eye. “He’s stuck in the **<<NerveGear>>**.”

Yoshida opened and closed his mouth. “No,” he said, finally. “Get out.”

“No?” Yukari repeated, incredulously, and made no move to vacate. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

His face was dark. “I mean I’m not touching the** <<NerveGear>>** ever again. Find someone else to solve your problem.”

Yukari gaped. “Find someone else?” she echoed. “Who the hell else? Everyone’s in jail!”

Yoshida shrugged. “Not my problem.”

She clenched her jaw. “Is there something wrong with your mind?” she demanded. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, refusing me?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my mind,” Yoshida sneered. “I have 142 IQ and eidetic memory. Is there something wrong with your ears? Do you know that N-O means ‘no’?”

Something painful and raw tugged at her at his comment, and she couldn’t help the way she swung her bat up and pointed it at him. Yoshida eyed it in fear, like it was a weapon. She couldn’t figure out how to say that it was just the best conduit for her emotions, nor did she want to. “I won’t say this again,” she promised darkly. “_ What the hell is wrong with you _.”

“I’m not doing anything wrong,” Yoshida insisted pointed, voice going a little high. “Put that down! Get out or I’ll call the police!”

“_ People are dying _,” Yukari seethed. “Meanwhile, Kayaba’s protégé sits in his dirty hovel and eats fucking four cheese pizza---”

“Don’t call me that!” he demanded. “I want nothing to do with him!”

“Just like you wanted nothing to do with him when you designed that fucking game?!”

“I didn’t know what I was doing!”

Yukari took a large step forward, prompting Yoshida to backpedal. “Boo-fucking-hoo,” she said. “You sad your great master didn’t let you in on the secret? Chairman Yuuki has poured hundreds of million yen in funding to find a solution for the **<<NerveGear>>**, meanwhile you, Kayaba Akihiko’s little pet protégé, are doing jack squat.”

“Stop calling me that!”

“I bet you secretly approve of his plans!” Yukari accused, furious. “I bet you’re doing nothing because you like the fucking power trip, because you think Kayaba is always right---” 

“Kayaba Akihiko ruined me!” Yoshida screamed. The sound rang in the room. “It doesn’t matter that I didn’t go to jail! It doesn’t matter that the state decided that I was innocent! Everyone here thinks I’m a murderer! My parents disowned me! I’ve moved three times in the past two months because people kept mailing me death threats! I can’t even go outside anymore without fearing for my life!” Yoshida’s voice grew louder, his breathing more ragged. He stumbled, suddenly and fell to his knees. He heaved, head bowed towards the ground.

Yukari was suddenly tired. She lowered the bat slowly, until it was right beside his head.

“I,” his shoulders trembled, “I was the most promising student in my city. I had won awards across the nation. People touted me as the next Kayaba Akihiko. And then the man himself came to see me and offer me a job.” A soft plop, and a droplet of water landed on the wooden floor. “I didn’t know anything. Please. I didn’t know anything.” Yoshida Haru pressed his head against the hard ground. “Please leave me alone. I won’t bother anyone. I just want,” a muffled sob, “I just want to live a quiet life.”

Yukari crouched down, bracing against the bat like it was the only thing keeping her up. It was still more than Yoshida Haru looked like he had. Yukari didn’t think she had ever seen a man as pathetic as the one before her now. Barely a man, really. He seemed to be fresh with a doctorate. Yukari distantly recalled that he was barely five years older than her.

Maybe he really was a genius. To think that a man like him could be brought so low.

Yukari was tired.

“You helped create a game that took children’s lives,” she told him, almost gently. “You designed a game that killed people.”

He flinched hard. “No,” he protested, feebly. “I didn’t. I didn’t!”

“2,400 dead by now,” she continued on, quietly. “How much would you say your participation was? One percent? Point five percent?” Yukari leaned forward to mutter right into his ears. “On your hands is the blood of a dozen people.”

“Stop!” Yoshida shouted, hands slapping over his ears. He almost smacked her in the nose. “Stop talking!”

Yukari had no such mercy. “A dozen people,” she repeated, louder. “All of them probably children. The game was marketed towards children, didn’t you know?” Yukari swallowed harshly. “Children like my brother! My brother!” Her voice rose in pitch and cracked at the last part. “My little brother is in that game!”

Yoshida didn’t so much as twitch at that. Yukari wondered if he was even listening anymore.

The thought angered her, and her rage built again. “You talk about your life being ruined,” she said, cooly. “But my little brother is in a coma. He’s already missed a year of school. We don’t even know if he’ll wake up.” She sucked in a breath. “You talk about your life being ruined,” Yukari said again, viciously, “while my little brother is fighting for his in the hell _ you _ helped make! Do you know how many times I’ve dreamed of waking up to find him already braindead?! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I REGRET BUYING HIM THAT _ FUCKING _ GAME?”

Yukari gripped the bat tightly and wiped furiously at her tears. She was so tired, but even more than that she was tired of the crying and her own uselessness, sick of being unable to do anything for the child who looked up to her since the moment he could walk.

She was so tired of being angry.

Swiping at the tears that refused to stop, she tried to speak again, but couldn’t make anything coherent past her sobs. “W-wh-what if he...what if he _ dies _ ?” she forces out, voice thin and desperate. “ _ He can’t go! _ He can’t! He’s so smart! Everyone knew he was going to be successful! He was going to become the best doctor in the world!” Yukari lifted up the bat and slammed it down in the opposite direction of Yoshida. The recoil stung her palm and helped to center her. It always helped. “Where is _ his _future?!” Raising the bat again, Yukari slammed it down.

The buzz in her fingers tingled all the way up to her elbow. Yukari couldn’t feel much of anything. The wood was dented and splintered when she lifted up her bat, and she lurched to her feet with a great heave.

“You don’t have anything to say?” she asked the pathetic lump next to her on the floor. There was no more rage to be mustered up.

“I-I didn’t know anything,” Yoshida sobbed weakly. “Please. I’m sorry. I didn’t know anything.”

“Anyone who knows more than you is already in jail,” she informed him dispassionately. “You know how that thing was made, and you know how to use it. You just don’t want to do anything because you’re scared of public scrutiny.” She turned away from him and towards the door. “Whatever. You’re more useless than I am.”

She opened the door, and paused. Gave the dusty countertops and flea bitten curtains one more glance. “Just rot the rest of your life away here. It suits you.”

She slammed the door behind her.

<~o~>

Because she wasn’t an absolutely terrible person, Yukari headed back the next day to inform Yoshida that his address was about to be public domain very soon. Maybe he deserved it, but it wasn’t her place to judge.

To her surprise, she found the man sitting on the stairway, his hoodie zipped all the way up. When Yoshida saw her, he stumbled to his feet. “You-you came back!”

Yukari couldn’t help the frown. “Calm down,” she said, a little harshly. “I just came to tell you that your address is going on the black market tomorrow. You might want to contact the police.”

“I thought about what you said yesterday and I agree I’m a terrible person and I want to help,” Yoshida rushed out at the same time. Then he blinked. “Wait, I’m sorry, what?”

Yukari was bemused. “...You first,” she decided.

<~o~>

Yoshida eventually got his living situation sorted out, and she ended up going to his new apartment upwards of four times a week, boring endlessly over old notes and proposed theories. 

The police had published all that they knew of Kayaba Akihiko’s company and assets in order to solicit help from the public, but every lead had long been chased and every avenue explored. If Yukari thought a set of knowledgeable eyes would catch something, she was sorely disappointed.

“I’m sorry,” Yoshida said to her after a week. “I know you’re trying really hard, but everything here’s already been looked at. There’s nothing I can tell you that these reports won’t.”

Yukari sighed in frustration and threw the printouts onto his desk. The screen on her phone lit up, indicating a message from her mom. She swiped it away. “I know, I know.” She sighed. “You were a developer on his team. Was there really nowhere that he showed you that could be a clue to where he is?”

“Developer meetings and project overviews were never consistent,” Yoshida said, sympathetic. “We would sometimes meet three times a month in a different restaurant, and other times we’d go two months before meeting in a university. There really was no rhyme or reason.”

“Wait hold up.” Yukari took out a pen and paper. “What restaurants were these?”

<~o~>

After a few month’s worth of observation and interrogation, it became clear that none of the restaurants were connected to Kayaba financially, ideologically, or otherwise. They were simply the flavor of the week. Yukari had contacted several people to help her procure the restaurant’s financial reports, but aside from one case of tax evasion the rest were clean and generally added up. Whatever amounts the reports were off by were so small a person could not live off of them.

“Nothing,” Yukari said, finally, after a restaurant’s unexplained expense turned out to a dry cleaner’s bill. “It’s clean.”

Yoshida sighed, frustrated. “Okay. I believe we’re on the right track, however. What’s next on the list?”

Even if they weren’t, Yukari would sooner die than quit. “Toto University, which you’ve been to three times,” she read off one of the small post-its on the board. “We also didn’t do the open office workshop on New Sunrise street---”

“I have a contact who still works there, and I already investigated it,” Yoshida interrupted thoughtfully. “I have the documents in the right drawer---no, the other one---and nothing on them makes me think something suspicious is going on. It’s still a small startup, and they definitely operate well within their budget.”

Yukari flipped through the papers, giving each a cursory glance. She nodded, and looked up. “Okay, Toto University it is then.”

<~o~>

While she asked around the underworld for help and called in favors from friends, Yoshida got to work on establishing an official correspondence with the principal. The university rebuffed them several times, unwilling to associate their school’s reputation with the current state of affairs. 

Yukari had gone with Yoshida for the fourth time that week, and the tenth time that month, when she suddenly tugged on his sleeve and leaned in. “Who’s that?” she asked furtively.

Yoshida followed her gaze and landed on a petite woman with short, straight hair. “Ah,” he realized. “That’s Ms. Koujiro Rinko. She let us into the building once. Why?”

Yukari could have just been grasping at straws, but she already felt her suspicions began to grow. “There’s another saline drip in her bag, does she work in the bio-department?”

“Ah, no,” Yoshida denied. “She works in the Electrical and Electronic Engineering department. It’s close to the Biology Department though. She’s probably making a delivery.”

Yukari blinked. “Yoshida,” she said. “There’s _ another _ saline drip in her bag.” She stared at him and waited for the realization to dawn on his face.

It did, and he whipped his head around to watch the woman’s retreating back. “I’ve only ever seen her once,” he breathed, “but now that I think about it she and Kayaba knew each other already.” He turned to Yukari and they exchanged a weighted look. “Can you get a report on her monthly finances?”

Yukari snorted. “Who do you think I am?”

<~o~>

“I’m following her on the CCTV cameras,” Yoshida explained unnecessarily. Yukari let him talk anyway since it was how he oriented himself. “For an electronic engineering researcher, she’s quite careless. Either she doesn’t know about these cameras, or she doesn’t care. Ah, she’s going through a tunnel, give me a second.”

Yukari watched as Yoshida switched over from a local street camera onto a highway cam, then back to a local street camera. The car Koujiro Rinko was driving was never out of their sights for longer than a second or two. It helped that she was a cautious driver, not unlike the older grandfathers you’d see driving on the street.

When Koujiro suddenly made a sharp right turn onto an unsigned alley road, they almost didn’t react in time.

“Forty kilometers an hour. Eleven meters. Are there even cameras--forty-four meters-- in that direction? Sixty-six meters, seventy-eight, eighty-nine, a hundred…” Yoshida clicked through the cameras furiously, muttering under his breath. They managed to catch a glimpse of her white car every now and then through the shadows, but there were no cameras that had a good view. They lost her image soon after. “Two hundred meters...two hundred twenty two…”

Yukari meanwhile was doing her best to extrapolate on a printed map of Tokyo with a marker. “That’s in the opposite direction of her house,” she observed. “It looks like she’s heading to the Minato ward!”

“Okay, great,” Yoshida said immediately, and transferred the image to the cameras facing the main entry street into Minato ward. Sure enough, a modest white car soon pulled up into view.

Yoshida whooped. Yukari clapped. They looked at each other and grinned.

Minato ward was under the best surveillance, due to its biased population of wealthy residents. As far as Yukari and Yoshida had known, Kayaba Akihiko did not own any estate in it.

Seeing as Koujiro Rinko was pulling into the garage of nice and simple villa that was empathetically not under her name, nor affordable with her current and past wealth , it might be time to revise that statement.

A knock on the door got both their attention, but the succession of three sharp raps and two soft ones allowed them to relax. A manilla envelope was slipped under the door without further ado.

Yukari walked over to pick it up, as Yoshida was too busy monitoring the cameras. Flipping through the sheaths of paper, which contained among its number photocopied receipts and electricity bills, Yukari frowned.

“Applesauce,” she read. “Intravenous nutrients. Milk. I think this brand of bottled water has enhanced mineral content. These are once a week purchases in bulk. She’s either taking care of a senile father---”

“--or attending to someone in a coma,” Yoshida realized. “Do you think…?”

“Her electricity and water bills are non-existent,” she said, by way of answer. Biting her lip, she added. “You know what? I do think. I think she might know something we don’t.”

<~o~>

Normally, heists were planned for the dead of the night. But between the heightened security, and the fact that Koujiro Rinko did not leave the villa until early next morning, Yukari had to abandon convention. Yoshida was just clueless in general.

However, he did have a lot of opinions on what to bring. "Here, hold this cap. I need to get you one too. Where's my lockpick set?" He rummaged through a clear plastic box with his belongings and pulled what looked like a giant barcode scanner. "Think we need an EMP jammer?"

“Up to you.” Yukari stepped neatly aside when Yoshida shoved the box away and reached out for another. "What's with the hat?" she asked.

“It has an IR LED in the brim, and is great for visual interference with cameras.” When Yukari showed no signs of understanding, he sighed. “It’s causes a camera glare that will cover your face.”

“The police let you buy these?” Yukari asked, skeptically. “None of these seem like they should belong to a model citizen.”

“I made them,” Yoshida corrected. At her incredulous look, he shrugged. “I spent about twenty four hours a day by my lonesome. I get bored.”

She would never understand him. “I’ll get a backpack for these,” she said instead. “I’m also bringing my bat.”

A sudden clatter, and she turned to see Yoshida gawking at her with a mess of wires at his feet. “You are _ not _ bringing your bat,” he said.

Yukari raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”

<~o~>

She brought her bat. 

They set out nearly two weeks later, after they managed to confirm Koujiro Rinko’s schedule and found a time where they had a guaranteed thirty minutes to poke around.

“Think about it this way,” Yoshida said, muffled through his face mask. His sunglasses, hoodie, and cap were a bit much, and so were hers, because everyone on the train was giving them a wide berth. “If it turns out Ms. Koujiro is innocent, then no harm no foul. She’ll never even know we’re there. If it turns out she’s hiding something, then we’ll be there when she can’t actively impede us.”

The doors opened and Yukari walked out. “You coming?” she asked her companion, who continued to mutter to himself on the train.

They took off the face mask once they hit a less populated street, and walked confidently through the Minato ward towards the simplistic white villa Koujiro frequented so often. People still gave them second glances, but it didn’t seem to be suspicious to the point where the police were being called on them.

Entry into the villa was almost too easy. Yoshida analyzed the electronic combination after countless repetitions on the CCTV cameras, and the lock itself was unlocked shortly after.

The inside of the house was both what they expected, and then so much more. Wires trailed along the walls down every hall in the house, in threes and fours. The house thrummed persistently, and had heat indicative of a large machine running constantly. The kitchen was right next to the main entrance, though it seemed to be in a pretty sorry state. There was only a stove and a blender. 

Exchanging a glance, Yukari and Yoshida followed the wires all the way down the hall until they came to a large room braced on all sides by elegant looking fans. In the center of the room, was a large, blinking, behemoth of a machine. Wires slotted into it on all sides, and the humming was loudest right next to it.

“This must be the real server,” Yoshida said, surprised. “Then...was the one at the company just a decoy?”

They traced some wires back out of the room, splitting up as to cover more ground. Yukari soon found herself in the residential wing of the house, and was about to crack a door with the light on when a buzz sounded from her pocket.

_ Yoshida Haru: Come back to the server room, I have something to show you _

Peeking into the room, she noticed a strange pod like machine, and could vaguely make out a humanoid figure inside. Feeling her throat close up (_ who’s that? _) she quickly backed away to meet up with Yoshida.

When they found each other, he led her down the stairs to a doorway hidden half behind a closet. Yukari followed him in, and blinked at the lights that suddenly assaulted her.

The place looked like every technologist’s dream. Panels hovered and floated across the room, bearing in them tiny images of people in armor and flashes of light. A gigantic keyboard in that same, translucent blue hovered at the center of it all. Above it was the only stationary camera, whose images rapidly switched in and out to different perspectives of what looked to be a boss fight.

It took awhile to realize what she was looking at. “Is that… **<<Sword Art Online>>**?” she asked, despite the impossibility of it.

“That’s the boss on floor 68,” Yoshida said, grimly. “I saw it once during a developer’s meeting.”

“Then this is…” Yukari walked into the room. “This is all **<<SAO>>** ? How can that be? Why would he do this? Is he getting off on this?” She gasped when the giant creature on screen slammed his scimitar into a player called [ _ DeathSakura _], prompting the girl to open her mouth in plaintive agony before bursting into red pixels. The images had no sound, but somehow that made it worse. Yukari felt like throwing up. “Oh my god. What a sick freak.”

Yoshida grimaced. “I don’t know, but I don’t think he’s been here for quite a while. There’s dust all over the place.” Seeing her face, he patted her on the shoulder sympathetically, despite not looking too well himself. “Why don’t you...take a break. I’ll see if there’s anything I can find in here that can help us.”

Despite his suggestion, Yukari didn’t turn her eyes away from the cameras. It felt blasphemous, to look away while all these people suffered silently and with their families being none the wiser. She observed them all mutely, as avatars died every minute or so, and felt so incredibly powerless.

She was so entranced by the massacre playing out on screen that it took her a few seconds to notice an anomaly. “Yoshida,” she called, quietly. “What does a purple username mean?”

Yoshida was poring over a sheet of printed paper with a grim smile on his face. He looked up at her call. “Huh? Where?”

Yukari pointed at a middle-aged, grey-haired man in a bright red armor. [** _Heathcliff_ **] his name read in purple.

Yoshida’s jaw dropped. “Yukari,” he said, delicately. “That’s an admin feature.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“That’s an admin feature,” Yoshida repeated slowly. “When I was debugging the sensory features, my name showed up above my head in purple. You can turn it off in-game when facing other players, but I don’t think you can fool the system camera logs in the same way.”

“You mean…?”

He nodded. “I think we finally found him. Kayaba Akihiko.”

Yukari thought back to the room she had found with the person in a pod. “I think he’s in this house,” she rushed out. “I think he’s in one of the bedrooms on the top floor, in this game, right now!”

Yoshida looked gobsmacked, but a chime rang before he could come up with a response. He pulled out his phone and winced. “Our time’s up. If we don’t want to run into Ms. Koujiro, we need to go now.” He sounded dazed while he said it.

She could relate. Yukari was herself struggling with the weight of their discoveries, and slowly made her way out of the room after him. Glancing backwards one last time at the room that unlocked it all, her breath caught in her throat.

That was…!

On the main camera, in the background of all the action, a boy with fluffy dark brown hair was running over to give a man in armor a potion. The boy wore armor but still looked skinny, and she would recognize him anywhere.

Taiki!

She bit down the cry and quickened her steps out of the monitoring room. It became more imperative than ever that she figured a way to get him out of there.

<~o~>

For the next few days, neither of them could truly come to terms with what they had seen. They both agreed that they should not let the police know just yet, but that just left them feeling listless. Yukari was stunted by the deaths, and also a glimpse at her little brother determined and whole. Yoshida practiced endlessly on his keyboard, typing in garbled string after string of alphanumeric documents into a text document.

“What are you doing?” Yukari asked, finally.

“I remembering the admin passwords for every fifteen minute mark,” Yoshida replied. “I found a smaller keyboard that allowed backend access into the program. I’m guessing Kayaba did some debugging in that room. If I can access the code, I can probably change it and re-enable the logout feature.

Yukari sat up. “That’s...that’s amazing,” she breathed. “When’s the soonest you can do this?”

“The soonest we’ll have a large block of time where Koujiro Rinko is out of the house,” he said promptly. “I’m remembering all the password for November 1st.”

"November 1st," Yukari echoed, looking down at the palm of her hand. She closed her fist.

Only two weeks away.

<~o~>

From then on out, it was Yoshida's show. At best, Yukari could provide security detail. At worst, she was just another obstacle in his way. So while he clacked away at the keyboards, occasionally muttering and cursing under his breath, she sat in the room's only chair and watched the cameras.

She searched for Taiki, but the camera feeds were too numerous and varied to pin down to one location. He had looked so brave and stalwart, when she saw him, completely unlike the whiner and crybaby almost two years ago. She couldn't help but feel a burst of pride for the person he was sure to become.

Yoshida cursed loudly, enough to startle her of her daze.

"What?" Yukari asked, turning around. "What happened?"

Yoshida let out a frustrated breath. "This code runs too fast," he said, wearily. "I can't get the changes to stick before the AI overwrites them again."

Yukair pressed her lips together. "What does that mean for us?" she asked.

He looked up, tired. "It means I might need to touch the administrative code. I might be able to turn off the AI's self-correcting functionality."

Everything flew over her head. "And what's the problem with that?"

"The AI is _ massive _," Yoshida groaned, typing furiously away. "It's nearly impossible to isolate a single instance variable, which is why I wanted to work with the auxiliary functions. Hey, wait." He frowned. "Where's MHCP001?" The screen scrolled up and down rapidly under his ministrations, but to no avail.

"What's that?"

"The Mental Health and Counselling Program AI," Yoshida clarified. "This entire block of disabled code currently leads nowhere. The AI was massive in its own right. Who deleted it?"

Yukari decided it was best to let him ramble on his own, and so turned back to the camera feeds. She nearly fell out of the chair when she noticed a familiar face in a group of players in one of the panels on the bottom right.

She quickly zoomed in on it. Taiki was in that group, and they were all bent down harvesting something from the ground. The remainder of the panels were showing similar activity in the same general field area.

She watched him dig furiously at a thorny fern, and had the camera follow his group as they made their way to what was probably a home base. The navigation was rather intuitive; it hadn't taken her long to pick up at all.

She watched him smile and laugh with his friends, and couldn't help smiling herself. Then they all whipped their heads in the direction one of their members were pointing. Instantly, all the cheer fell off their faces and was replaced with fear. They began to run.

What was going on? Yukari tried to enlist a second camera so that she could see what they were so scared of. She caught a glimpse of horns and fur before a stampede of ox-like men trampled their way onto the main camera, and mobbed Taiki's group.

Yukari watched, heart in her throat, as the group failed to resist and soon broke off into individual sprints.

Taiki had been on the cross country team back while he was still in school, and soon overtook the lead runner. However, he suddenly paused, and turned back towards the bull men in an attempt to help a struggling player. _ Run! _ She wanted to scream at him, but couldn't find her voice past all the dread. _ Save yourself first! _

She watched, helpless, as a bull man ran him through in a moment of distraction.

Taiki burst into tiny pink shards.

Yukari stared unblinkingly at the camera for a moment. Another moment. Another.

Taiki wasn’t on the screen anymore.

Yukari stood there, fingers unmoving on the keyboard, for what felt like an eternity. The pixels had dissipated into the wind. The monster men's names turned from red to white, and they transformed into cows and ambled away. Taiki’s surviving group members had picked up his dropped potions and stumbled away. Yukari didn’t move her eyes from the spot where her brother had just been, and robotically answered her phone when it began to ring.

“Hiragana Yukari speaking.” Her mouth formed the words.

“You blasted child!” Her mother’s shrill voice pierced through the fog that had settled around her. She sounded distraught. “Now you answer the phone! You! I shouldn’t even have bothered to call! Do you even care?! Does this family mean anything to you anymore?!”

Yukari swallowed. Her throat was terribly, terribly dry. “Mom,” she croaked out. “Mom, please.”

“You can still call me mom?” A haunted laugh. “Yukari, come home. I’m begging you. Taiki’s gone. The hospital just called. Taiki passed away five minutes ago. Yukari, come home.”

Yukari’s other hand fell to her side. “Taiki..?”

“Taiki’s dead, Yukari.” Her mom started wailing. “He’s dead!”

The phone slipped out of her fingers, and clattered to the ground. Yukari thought she could hear her mother’s sobs from her, but it was too far away. What wasn’t was the security screens, and she scanned it furiously, searching for a mess of brown hair and glasses. Taiki couldn’t have died. She had just seen him. He was smiling, and trading awkward jokes with his new friends.

Until the ox-men charged in and he turned into dust.

No.

Yukari scanned the cameras again, grabbing the mouse to rotate all the screens. Maybe she had missed something. Taiki was just fine. She had seen him less than a minute ago.

Her eyes caught on security camera 0551, stationed at the front of the boss entrance on the 70th floor. There was a grey-haired man in a bulky red armor leading a large group of users over to the main door. There was a purple username above his head.

“Kayaba,” she breathed. “Kayaba...AKIHIKO!”

Something in Yukari snapped. She grabbed wildly for her baseball bat and swung it down the minute she had a solid grip on it. It slammed against the electronic keyboard, causing the screen to flicker warningly. She lifted it up and brought it down. “KAYABA!” Lifted it and brought it down. “_ KAYABA _!”

She screeched his name again and again, bring down the bat on the keyboard. The translucent blue had gone red, and every panel in the room lit up with a red warning. She felt a sharp, burning pain as some exposed wiring released a jolt of electricity up her metal bat, but merely brought down the bat again. “I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL KILL YOU!”

The keyboard screen soon went black and dead, but the rage continued to bubble inside her. She turned towards the nearest smashable item and lifted up the bat again.

Only to be tackled down by a heavy weight. Yoshida.

“LET ME GO,” she screeched, twisting her arms in an attempt to break free. “LET ME GO! I’LL KILL HIM!”

“Did you see what you were about to attack?!” Yoshida demanded. “Stop that! Ow! Don’t bite me! Are you a vampire?!”

Yukari spat out her saliva and his blood. “LET ME GO!”

Her wrists were free for a single moment when a sudden blow drove into her cheek. Yukari went lax, lifting a stunned hand to her throbbing cheek. She looked up at her captor with wide eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Yoshida rushed out, abortedly reaching for her cheek. “Hiragana, I’m so sorry. You were about to take out one of the circuits, and I didn’t know how to snap you out of it. Hey, look at me. Can you see me? How many fingers am I holding up?”

Yukari blinked. “The circuit?” she echoed.

“One of the main power circuits,” Yoshida explained. “If that thing went out you would have died from the discharge. And so would everyone else in the game. Hiragana, what happened? Are you okay?”

She blinked again. She almost killed everyone in the game?

Oh.

Oh god.

She released her grip on her bat, and collapsed backwards. Her head was buzzing, and her vision was fuzzy and white.

“I’m done,” she heard herself say, far away as if in a dream.

Yoshida looked down at her uncomprehendingly. “What?”

“I’m done,” she repeated, tonelessly. “I’m going home. My family needs me.”

Yoshida knelt down and gripped her tightly by the shoulders. “What the hell are you saying?” he protested. “What do you mean you’re going home?”

She could barely hear him. “My brother needs a funeral.” She heard him inhale sharply, and his fingers dug into her shoulder. It should have been bruising, but she just felt numb. “I need to go home and help my parents prepare it.”

“That’s absolutely terrible,” Yoshida said. “But what about our mission? How long are you going to put it off?”

Yukari felt irritated. What did he care? What did _ she _ care? “My mission was to save my brother,” she informed him. “He’s dead, so I failed. I’m done here.”

“That’s it?” Yoshida demanded. “You dragged me this far only to give up because your brother is dead?”

She didn’t even think before she socked him right across the jaw. “How dare you say that to me? What do you know?!” she screamed. “What right—”

“I know that there are still people stuck in that hell!” Yoshida yelled, chin turning red in the shape of her fist. The rawness of his voice startled her from her second punch. “I know that there are still parents waiting to see the outcome for their kids! I know that there are hospital rooms upon hospital rooms of people who still have a chance, and YOU’RE NOT GIVING IT TO THEM!”

Yukari started crying. The loss of her brother, her_ little _ brother, who she had sworn to guide and protect, had torn open a wound that was sluggishly bleeding. Everything ached, from her arms to her lungs to her heart. She had just lost an entire future, one where she’d live to see her family grow old and happy and healthy. She’d never be a consultant for his first date, never be his best woman, never get to see what he’d looked like with wrinkles. It pained her so much she thought death might have been kinder.

“T-that’s not _ f-fair _ ,” she shrieked, not in anger but in desolation. She grabbed her hair in her fist. “That’s...not... _ fair. _”

“It’s not,” her companion says, voice cracking. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t...owe them..._ anything _,” she forced out, vision blurry with tears.

Yoshida looked at her sympathetically. “Is that argument going to fly for you?” he asked, gently.

Yukari tried to stop weeping. She was stronger than this. She wasn’t stronger than this. “N-no.”

Yoshida gently put a hand on her knee. “May I?” he asked. She nodded, and he wrapped his two stupidly long arms around her torso and tucked knees. She released her hair and curled her arms around his left arm. It was grounding, in a way.

They stayed like that for what could be seconds or hours. She hated the sun shining brightly through the window, the dust all over the input devices, and the gentle smell of coffee in the room. She hated that no one else would mourn the way her world ended, aside from her family and a stranger she press ganged into this mess.

She hated what she would say next. “We’re going to finish what we started.”

“Of course we are,” Yoshida huffed. If her elbows and sharp angles made him uncomfortable, his hug didn’t show it.

They fell silent once more, this time a softer, stretchy pause. Not an end, but not a beginning either. The steady onset of grief.

“Also, damn, you hit hard. I think this is going to bruise.”

Yukari laughed wetly, and it was an exercise of every shred of willpower she had not to cry. Taiki. Taiki Taiki Taiki. “Sorry.” She just lost him. She failed, and she lost him.

She couldn't fail again.

"I didn't say that to make you feel guilty," Yoshida mumbled. "Anyway, we've run out of time today. I've memorized the password for the 7th. Ms. Koujiro will still be in the city, so that's going to be it. All or nothing."

Yukari didn't respond.

<~o~>

The days until November 7th passed by in a hazy blur. Yukari didn’t remember eating or drinking, or even showering. But food that was placed in front of her slowly disappeared over the hour, and she didn’t smell like sweat and filth, so she figured something was being done.

They entered the house at 1400 on the 7th, and didn’t dawdle around. They headed straight down to the basement, where their first obstacle came in the form of a digital trackpad. Yoshida cursed and reached into his bag for his EMP jammer. It was disabled easily enough, and Yukari kicked it in with one blow.

Yoshida cursed, “They installed security cameras! Now she definitely knows we’re here!”

Wordlessly, Yukari grabbed the chair and her bat, and smashed the camera in. Then she brought the chair to the other side of the room and did the same. “I’ll wait outside for her,” she said tonelessly. “You do what you have to.”

Yoshida stared at her, wide-eyed. “That works, I guess...”

Yukari climbed up the stairs and squatted down right behind the front door. It took her awhile to realize her hands were shaking. Was she...nervous?

A twinge of anger tried to make its way known, but fizzled out soon enough. There was nothing left to fuel it. Yukari wrapped her shaking hand with her other one, and waited for them both to stop trembling. She pressed them against her forehead. _ Come on. Please. One more day. One more day. _

And then she could finally put this behind her.

A beep from behind the door jolted her out of her thoughts, and she grabbed her bat and silently crept up.

When Koujiro Rinko stalked through the door in self-righteous indignation, Yukari wasted no time in slamming the door behind her. The other woman whipped around, startled, and relaxed when she saw a teenager before her.

“Might I ask what you’re doing in my home?” Koujiro Rinko inquired politely.

Yukari raised an eyebrow. “This isn’t your home now, is it?” she asked pointedly. “Why don’t I ask the questions, Ms. Koujiro Rinko?”

The other woman’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think you understand the position you’re in, young lady. If you don’t want this going on your record, I suggest you cut the bullshit and leave the premises.”

Yukari ignored the other woman and her own shaking hands. “What’s your relationship with Kayaba Akihiko?”

It must not have been hard to sense her anxiety. Koujiro didn’t seem too threatened by her. “I’m under no obligation to tell you that. I will take you to court if you don’t subsist.”

“His caretaker?” Yukari asked, condescendingly. “His nanny? His hired escort? His sister? How much does he pay you to take care of his decrepit body? Can he still get it up?” Her mouth to brain filter was nonexistent, and the vulgarity pouring out of her mouth might have shocked her another day.

It seemed like her words struck a nerve. "I am his _ lover _," Koujiro snapped. Immediately, she shut her mouth.

Contradictorily, the words steadied Yukari. Her hands stopped trembling. Every single drop of blood in her body ran cold. How dare she. How dare _ he _. How dare they try to be in love in a society brought to its knees by a tragedy of their design.

"This is trespassing," Koujiro informed her evenly, oblivious to her inner turmoil. "Leave now or I'll call the police."

"Try it, bitch." Yukari raised her bat threateningly. "I fucking dare you. Call the police and I'll tell them all about the coma patient you have upstairs."

Koujiro's nostrils flared. "You don't know what you're talking about," she said with certainty.

Yukari laughed. "Oh I don't? It's just my imagination that he looks like Kayaba Akihiko?" The woman stiffened and Yukari dangled her phone by the phone strap. "I took enough pictures to run the front page newspaper. You want to try me?"

Koujiro abruptly lunged towards the phone in her hand. Yukari didn't even have to think about it before slamming her bat into the woman's side. Koujiro cried out, and backed away when Yukari and her bat stalked forward.

With little effort, she managed to herd the older woman down into the basement. It was similarly easy to block Koujiro off and send her scrabbling into the monitor room. Yukari trapped her against the large, main keyboard, much to the surprise of Yoshida.

"Woah, okay," he said, before turning his back on them and focusing on the backend access. "Hold on, I almost isolated the player class."

"What are you doing?" Koujiro demanded from him, all sense of poise lost. "Stop that right now!"

"Why?" Yukari found herself taunting, as she strode into the space between Koujiro and Yoshida, lest the former tried to lunge. "Afraid for your beloved?"

The other woman pressed her lips tightly together.

"You know, there's a keyboard right behind you," Yukari said, sweetly. "Why don't you warn him? Tell him what a mess we're making of his great project. I'm waiting!" She raised her hands above her head in a position of mock surrender.

Koujiro didn't make a move.

"Oh," Yukari made a sound of realization. "Is it because you can't? Do you not have access?" She covered her mouth with one hand and sneered, "I thought you were his lover. Does he not trust you with his projects?"

A flinch. "You don't know anything."

"Did _ you _ know anything?" Yukari inquired in faux concern. "Did you know what he was planning? Or did he never see you as more than a live-in nanny?"

Koujiro was trembling. Whether in anger or anguish, it was hard to tell. From what Yukari could attest to, those two looked eerily similar. Her attention was soon drawn away, however, by a strange situation playing out on the virtual world cameras. A boy in a dark blue coat with two swords had one of them pointed at Kayaba’s character, and everyone was observing the two of them.

[_**Heathcliff** _] waved his hand, and a strange yellow sheen fell over a girl with long, light brown hair. **<<Paralysis>>** showed up as a status effect next to her name. Now that she was looking more intently, all the other players barring Dual Sword had that status.

Yoshida had noticed it too. “I’m working on it,” he told her, turning back to type on the screen. “Almost isolated the status groups.”

Koujiro watched them both mutely, and appeared to have lost any intent to resist.

The two began to fight on screen. Yukari was never interested in dog fights, and her eyes naturally slid away.

“Got it!” Yoshida said triumphantly, and a ripple ran through the video feed. The yellow statuses flickered away for a split second.

And suddenly the girl was between Kayaba and his challenger, a sword run through her heart.

Yoshida’s mouth fell open in the corner of her eye. Yukari didn’t know what her own face looked like. It must have been just as horrified, because it caused Koujiro to laugh grimly.

“Look what you children have done!” the older woman declared, voice strained. On screen, the boy was cradling the girl’s body in his arms. “You thought you were doing good, didn’t you? You thought you were doing the right thing! You were the reason that girl died!”

No. Absolutely fucking not. “Yoshida Haru!” Yukari shouted, snapping Yoshida out of his thoughts. “You better not listen to a single word out of this bitch’s mouth! She’s Kayaba Akihiko’s whore, for fuck’s sake! Remember whose fault this really is!”

Yoshida shook his head sharply, and slapped his cheeks. “Right,” he said. “I-I’ll figure something out. There’s still time.”

“It’s too late,” Koujiro told them. “You can’t undo what you’ve done.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Yoshida said in reply. Yukari was almost proud. “Shit, I can’t type fast enough! I can’t enable the login button at all!”

As Yukari watched, the remnants of the girl faded and the boy stood up again. He engaged Kayaba in battle again, but was decidedly losing. “Anything! Do anything!”

Yoshida groaned in aggravation, and slammed down his hands. In that moment, the boy also received a sword through his chest.

“No!” Yukari screamed.

The boy lit up slowly, much like Taiki did before he burst, and like the girl did, when the camera feed suddenly froze. It jolted forward a bit at a time, almost stuttering through its frames. 

Yukari didn’t know what was going on. “Wh-what?” The boy still had the hazy quality to him, but Yukari watched as he progressed in stop motion towards Kayaba Akihiko, and stabbed a sword through the man’s heart. A blue, hexagonal screen popped up: 

<_ GAME CLEAR!> _

_ <November 7th, 14:55> _

Immediately afterwards, the screen filled with endless repetitions of a single, cheery two word phrase: ‘Hello World!’

“You said anything, right,” Yoshida said sheepishly. “I wrote a while-true loop. My professor would revoke my degree for this.”

Yukari tried to steady her breathing despite the sudden fullness of her chest. “You…”

A sudden warning blare caused everyone’s attention to turn towards Koujiro. A tinny, female voice suddenly sounded out. “_ Warning! Resting heart rate dropping below 60 bpm! Warning! Resting heart rate dropping below 45 bpm! _”

Koujiro looked resigned. “So it’s begun.”

“_ Warning! Resting heart rate dropping below 20 bpm! _”

Yoshida looked alarmed. “What do you mean?!”

“_ Warning! Resting heart rate dropping to 0 bpm! _”

Koujiro seemed heartbroken for some reason. “It means you can’t reach him anymore,” she said quietly. “No one can. Akihiko is longer in the physical world.”

She suddenly bolted past Yukari, who couldn’t react in time to stop her. Yukari was reasonably confident that she could catch up, before Yoshida caught her sleeve and held her back. “Leave her,” he said. “What can she do anymore? If she’s right, Kayaba Akihiko has just died.”

“I need to know what she meant about the physical world,” Yukari said insistently, shaking off his grip. “Let me go!”

Something dawned on Koujiro. “Kayaba once mentioned that he wanted to upload his consciousness into virtual reality,” he said, sounding doubtful into his own ears. “Do you think---I mean, we all thought it was impossible---but if it was _ him _\---”

At the thought of Kayaba Akihiko terrorizing more innocent children while safe in the confines of the virtual world, Yukari felt shivers run up her spine. “He’s not _ in there _,” she said, unsure of what she was referring to. “He can’t still be around. I refuse!”

She took off before Yoshida could stop her, shoes slapping against the wooden stairs. She eventually came to the floor with the bedroom she saw that time, and slammed the door open. She slipped into the room, breathing heavily.

Yoshida caught up to her, showing up by the doorway as she stared down silently at the motionless figure in the pod. There was nothing else in the room other than her, a white pod, and a dead man.

Kayaba Akihiko had given them one last middle finger, and slipped through their hands once more.

“There’s...there’s a chance it didn’t succeed,” Yoshida said, uncertainly. “The success rate is less than two percent.”

Which meant it was all but certain that Kayaba Akihiko was now in the virtual world, he didn’t say. She didn't want to hear it either.

Yukari grabbed the smartphone laid at the foot of the pod. She punched in three numbers, and held the phone up to her ears.

"Hello, Minato Ward Police?” she greeted, and Yoshida stared at her in bewilderment. “My friend and I are vandalizers who broke into this house on Prince street. There's a thin, sickly man here, and my friend recognizes him as Kayaba Akihiko. I’m calling from his phone right now, trace the number if you don’t believe me." She rattled off the address, and then promptly hung up. Turning to Yoshida, she said, simply, "Let's go."

He trailed after her hesitantly. "That was quite something you were saying to Ms. Koujiro," he tried. "I haven't seen you like that in a while."

Yukari knew he was referring to their first meeting. "Neither have I," she said, curt, and ended the conversation there.

They didn't speak again after that.

<~o~>

All the news ever wanted to talk about these days was how Kayaba Akihiko’s body was found, and how the people still trapped in **<<SAO>>** were freed. ‘Survivors,’ the media was calling them. There were still around three hundred people who did not wake up, but the prognosis was optimistic. Any day now, doctors were saying.

Yukari prepared her little brother’s funeral rites, and wondered how the newly freed players would reintegrate back into society. She wondered how the family of those who failed to survive felt about the fervent joy that gripped society by its lapels and refused to let go.

She wondered what was going to happen to those left behind. What was going to happen to her.

<~o~>

<~o~>

<~o~>

One sunny day, nearly ten years later, Hiragana Yukari walked into a coffee shop, ordered a latte, and took her drink to a table with a window seat. There was another person already sitting there. His arms were slightly longer than the average person’s.

She nodded at him once as she sat down, and he returned the acknowledgement. They sat there in silence until he finally spoke:

“I have to say, this isn’t how I thought it would go.”

“Is that so?” Yukari said, almost amused. “Did you expect me to start yelling and throwing my weight around again?”

“No, of course not!” Yoshida Haru denied quickly. He looked sheepish all of a sudden. “You’re just...quiet, I guess.”

“I took some anger management therapy,” Yukari said by way of explanation. “Still am.” She stared down at her coffee, of which the contents rather accurately reflected her state of mind. She was tranquil. Psychological help had done her good. “As you may know, I wasn’t in a good place near the end of it.”

Yoshida managed a weak smile. He had wrinkles all over his face, and looked like he’d managed to age twenty years in ten. “Ah, yeah. I know.”

Yukari tested the temperature of her drink, and her touch sent ripples across the surface.

“How have you been, Ms. Hiragana?” her companion tried again. “What do you do now?”

“Well.” She quirked her lips. “I’m doing better than I ever thought I’d do. Took a public speaking class first year of high school, went on to be a human rights lawyer. My first pro bono case was a local old lady trying to sue a cell phone company for causing her grandson’s eyesight to deteriorate.”

“And how’d that go?”

She snorted, unladylike. “I lost miserably, of course. The grandma thanked me for trying anyway, but I should be thanking her. It was a real eye opener, too see how utterly apathetic the government was when it came to technology and setting restrictions. My second case was a class lawsuit against **<<Alfheim Online>>**.”

Yoshida cleared his throat. “I heard about that one. I was in the U.S. at the time, but the extremity of his crime made it well known overseas. Congratulations on winning it.”

“Not the one against Sogou Nobuyuki,” Yukari clarified, amused. “The one against the game company. I did win, but the settlement wasn’t anything to write home about.”

“Ah,” Yoshida said. “I’m sorry---”

“I got what I wanted out of it,” Yukari said dismissively. “VRMMO regulations are now so much tighter than companies that don’t put in failsafes don’t even have a chance on the market.”

Yoshida took a sip of his coffee. “You’re doing good work,” he said, quietly.

“Aren’t I? Wait ‘til you hear about my pet project.”

“Do tell.”

“I’ve sued Kayaba Akihiko’s name off of every charity, school, and public institution that had him. I sued his companies and their subsidiaries for every drop I could squeeze out before bankruptcy. His main product, the **<<NerveGear>>**, his servers, they’re all shut down now. I gave most of that money to his victims, and then took the rest to freeze his other assets. They’re state property now.” Yukari smiled, cold and satisfied.

Yoshida was watching her silently.

Yukari blew on her cup again. “I’ve buried his name no deeper than a Wikipedia search away, but his legacy is destroyed. The old generation will forget him, and the new generation will not know him. What do you think about that, Mr. Yoshida?”

“I think you did what you swore you would do,” he said, after a moment. “I think you killed Kayaba Akihiko.”

Yukari took a large sip. The coffee was not too hot, but there was an almost soothing burn to it. “Yeah,” she agreed. “I did.”

They fell into a contemplative silence once more.

“I’ve seen the articles about your volunteer work,” Yukari said, idly picking at the thread on her sweater. “I think it’s very admirable of you to donate your time to teach the next generation how to program.”

Yoshida rubbed the back of his head, cheeks tinted red. “That...means a lot to me, coming from you. Thanks.”

Yukari blinked. “What do you mean?”

“When,” Yoshida paused, and took a deep breath. “When I was at the lowest point in my life, it was you who dragged me out of it. I’m ashamed to say that at first I looked down on you, because I knew you couldn’t do what I could, because you had to come to _ me _ for help. Then I realized—you’re a bigger person than I’ll ever be. All my intellect, all my ability, they’re nothing before what you’ve managed to do. What you’re still doing. That’s why, to have your approval,” Yoshida looked down, ears turning red as well, “it means everything.”

Yukari stared at him, mouth open in surprise. Against her will, she could feel her face turning a bit red, too. “That’s,” she began awkwardly, fidgeting with her hands. “That’s...really kind of you to say. Thank you.”

Yoshida smiled. “I know you didn’t want to keep in touch with me after all that.” When Yukari flustered, he held up a hand in peace and continued, “I don’t blame you for it. Really. Seeing me probably would have made you remember things that would hold you back.”

She didn’t say anything. It was true.

His smile turned a little knowing. “Part of the reason I invited you out today,” he admitted, “is that I’m hoping we could start keeping contact. Be friends. I completely understand if you’re not willing. I won’t force you.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You’re just someone I want to keep in my life, Ms. Hiragana. That’s all.”

She sat there, silent. When she realized he was patiently waiting for an answer, she couldn’t help the smile that came on her face. “I can do that.” Yukari reached a hand over, and he looked at it curiously. “You’re stuck with me now.”

When it sunk in, Haru looked positively delighted.

His hand slotted in nicely in hers.

<~o~>


	2. Character Designs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some concept art for the two Original Characters. Haru is a slouchy boi.

[](https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOBsELTBGyFNiOFfwK50xK4SGq5FDzyXc0suvUmGwWykxyilS_SNPBiq4MILv03Qg?key=aW54N191WmNKcExOQ2RFR3pPaGZzVTNxRXZNWXh3&source=ctrlq.org) [](https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOod8p2vI5lKJnYuaixtxXhTXNpQpLBpr2dUOkrCqzMVLPS9a90mcnUwef7lB-Yfg?key=VmtiTE9BRHF0UzNJN3RhR3NGNGxWMmJQVkFaVTNn&source=ctrlq.org)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attempts were made

[ ](https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipONMj72rjN0PzTvNjTYGvnEZl-uFq3Cf-_-0_8l7B4qmzeTsmG_pyqV0dGuSaWypQ?key=UnNpSGJfNlhxRDBIdVJjRXgtSlVDNjhmSUlTSFFR&source=ctrlq.org)

**Author's Note:**

> If Champion of Gaea was my first full experiment with multi-chaptered fic, then this is an experiment to answer the age old questions for fanfic writers: can an original character who's also the main character be likable? Can a story that centers solely on an original cast be enjoyable?
> 
> I'm excited to hear what you all think!


End file.
